BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES The study was undertaken to characterize factors influencing differential productivity of Anopheles gambiae complex mosquitoes at larval habitats in a rural village in western Kenya. METHODS Longitudinal larval sampling was done using an area sampler for 3 months. Emerged adults were identified to species level morphologically using taxonomic keys and to sub-species by...

Dispersal and adaptation are the two primary mechanisms that set the range distributions for a population or species. As such, understanding how these mechanisms interact in marine organisms in particular - with capacity for long-range dispersal and a poor understanding of what selective environments species are responding to - can provide useful insights for the exploration of biogeographic pa...

Large body size confers a reproductive advantage to adults of the wood-boring beetle Phoracantha semipunctata (F.) (Cerambycidae: Cerambycinae: Phoracanthini). Larvae of this species feed subcortically in stressed and dying eucalypt trees and logs. We evaluated the influence of the larval environment on larval performance and adult body size by manipulating the post-felling age of host logs (fr...

Stressful environmental conditions during mosquito larval development may enhance susceptibility of adult mosquitoes to viral pathogens. Although anti-viral defense system in mosquitoes remains uncertain, stress-related enhancement of mosquito susceptibility to viral pathogens may be due to alteration of signaling pathways such as the Toll and immune deficiency (IMD) pathways. To test the influ...

Recruitment is a key demographic process for population persistence. This paper focuses on barnacle (Semibalanus balanoides) recruitment. In rocky intertidal habitats from the Gulf of St. Lawrence coast of Nova Scotia (Canada), ice scour is common during the winter. At the onset of intertidal barnacle recruitment in early May (after sea ice has fully melted), mostly only adult barnacles and bar...

Environmental conditions experienced during animal development are thought to have sustained impact on maturation and adult lifespan. Here we show that in the model organism C. elegans developmental rate and adult lifespan depend on larval population density, and that this effect is mediated by excreted small molecules. By using the time point of first egg laying as a marker for full maturity, ...

Determinants of geographic variation in body size are often poorly understood, especially in organisms with complex life cycles. We examined patterns of adult body size and metamorphic traits variation in Iberian spadefoot toad (Pelobates cultripes) populations, which exhibit an extreme reduction in adult body size, 71.6% reduction in body mass, within just about 30 km at south-western Spain. W...

Culex pipiens mosquito is a species widely spread across Europe and represents a competent vector for many arboviruses such as West Nile virus (WNV), which has been recently circulating in many European countries, causing hundreds of human cases. In order to identify the main determinants of the high heterogeneity in Cx. pipiens abundance observed in Piedmont region (Northwestern Italy) among d...

The aims of this study were to characterise the ground-level larval habitats of the mosquito Culex quinquefasciatus, to determine the relationships between habitat characteristics and larval abundance and to examine seasonal larval-stage variations in Córdoba city. Every two weeks for two years, 15 larval habitats (natural and artificial water bodies, including shallow wells, drains, retention ...